Ben and David were familiar with the look of the place of course; they had cruised around it many times, and had always examined it with particular interest because it was a forbidden shore; but now they gazed at it as though it were somehow entirely new, as indeed it was to them, except for the beach and trees.
John Tuckerman nodded. “I’ll take your word for it, Tom. It lies exactly where it should according to the map of the harbor; though I can’t say that it looks very much like the small red dot on the chart Mr. Jackson showed me at his boathouse.”
There was not much to be seen except the whitish-yellow beach, several headlands of purple rock, and thick-growing pines that stood out black-green. There was, however, considerable to be heard as the sailing dory drew near. An immense cawing came from the tree-tops, and finally as the Argo nosed along close to the shore at least a score of crows flapped away from their meeting-place and went winging off to a more secluded grove.
“Uncle Christopher’s neighbors don’t seem to like visitors any better than he did,” observed Tuckerman with twinkling eyes. “Crows do sound dreadfully scolding, don’t they? And I never knew such birds for all wanting to talk at the same time.”
Tom knew where the old pier stood, and brought his boat skilfully up to the landing-stage. The sail was dropped and furled, baggage and stores carried ashore, and the four campers looked about them. From the old and rather decrepit pier a graveled path led up to the front of a wide white house, partially screened by trees.
“Cotterell Hall,” said Tuckerman, gazing at the ancient mansion. “That’s what they used to call it in Revolutionary days. Well, Tom, it’s up to you to tell us what to do. The house won’t run away, and something tells me it won’t be so very long before we’ll be hungry.”
“Suppose we look for our camping ground then,” said Tom, “since it seems to be understood that we’re not going to bunk in the house.”
“That’s the idea,” agreed Tuckerman promptly. “Fond as I am of ancestral halls and that sort of thing, I said to myself when I left the Middle-West for the New England coast: ‘John, you’re to sleep out of doors on a bed of pine boughs, even if the bugs do fall from the trees on your face and the boughs stick you as full of needles as a porcupine. You’re going back to the wild, that’s what you are!’”
His eyes behind his huge tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles looked so intensely serious that the three boys didn’t know whether to laugh or not. For all his dignified appearance he did seem extraordinarily guileless. David, the most outspoken of the three, shook his head solemnly. “This isn’t going to be what you’d call so all-fired wild, you know. If you’re looking for that, you ought to go up in the North Woods.”
Ben came to the rescue. “It’ll do as a starter though, Mr. Tuckerman,” he said encouragingly. “We can’t promise you bears or anything like that, but maybe there’ll be owls and loons and other things that sound sort of strange at night.”